When Mechanicals Outlast the Electronics

You can reasonably expect a new car to last 150,000 miles. If you live close to work, we can say you drive about 10,000 miles a year, and the car life is 15 years. During that time, you will have to replace wear items such as tires, filters, brake pads, and spark plugs/cables. You might be unlucky and have to replace a transmission once. Still, that seems like a pretty average car.

But what about the new electronics in the car? Is the integrated touch screen that acts as a navigation aid and entertainment control panel expected to last 15 years? Or should it be considered a wear item as well?

I recently had to replace an industrial touch screen for a customer. This new one was the third screen in five years. They seem to be lasting consistently two and a half years. The customer is not too happy about that life, and I agree. The manufacturer said (quietly) that the expected life is four years. This blog is not a rail against any particular manufacturer. Instead, I'd like to explore the lifecycles of regular "capital" equipment versus the electronics that support and run them.

Fifteen years for a car. Thirty-five years for an "old style" clothes washer and dryer. (See any of numerous "Made By Monkeys" entries at this Website.) Can modern electronics meet that level of life expectancy? Not really. I know of industrial equipment with electronics lasting that long, but that brings up other problems, such as software life expectancy. (I'll cover that in a different article.) The average consumer electronic device doesn't last nearly that long. So is a touch screen considered a wear item? Will you be expected to replace that navigation/entertainment display two or three times during the life of the car? That's an unsavory feature for me.

Charles Murray's article, Automotive Electronics: Do We Really Need All This Stuff?, prompted my line of thinking. His article asked whether we really needed all this stuff. The market will show how we decide, but I think we all know the trend will be "Yes, we want this stuff". Fine, we do. But that "stuff" will not last as long as the car. Computer manufacturers want you to upgrade computers every three years, but a more realistic consumer cycle is six to seven years. The computer may last longer, but it will be left behind by technology advances. So not only is it likely that the device will fail and require replacing several times, but we also might want to replace it with a newer version during the life of the car.

Charles Murray's article described Cadillac's rollout of a new head unit that will permit user interaction similar to personal electronic devices. Cadillac's reasons for doing this are obvious. It wishes to differentiate itself from other car manufacturers. My question is not why, but why bother? Cadillac is not a consumer electronics manufacturer. Auto manufacturers make cars, not user interfaces. The likes of Samsung and Apple are so far ahead in the realm of user interface that I have to wonder why Cadillac is making the attempt.

To me, it would make more sense for carmakers not to go for the "totally integrated" dashboard of the past. Instead, I'd like to see them provide a 5VDC USB bus and ports, and possibly a sort of universal support, so that any personal device can be used for navigation and entertainment. This approach accepts and adapts to the reality that electronics simply do not have the same lifecycle that the automobile does. It also gives the consumer the ability to change the entertainment system at will. I wrote about too much choice in my soda fountain article. Car companies offer too little choice or make the choice for us. Providing the USB bus would give us the freedom to make our own selection, change it at will, upgrade when it makes sense, and replace electronics that fail or wear out.

In answer to the first question raised in the article is no, I do not expect touch screens to be disposable any more than I would expect the steering wheel to be disposable, or for that matter the un-integrated radio of days gone by. I would hope that if the manufacturers cannot create a long-lived interface, they will only only put the non-essentials functions as part of it. I would not be pleased if my operator interface died on my car and I could no longer use the car until it was fixed.

The canonical case of the mechanicals NOT outlasting the electronics is the VCR. This is (was) due to the widespread use of plastic gears and actuaries. That's why it was a bad idea to buy a TV/VCR combo, cause after a year you just had a TV with a useless slot at the bottom.

Your's is a wise attitude. What I would give for a crank window when the motor has gone to the big junkyard in the sky and I do not want to pony up $200 for a new one. Same for the auto door locks and remote control mirrors. They are all cool and useful when they work, but royal pains when they do not.

Phillip10 is certainly detached from reality. The fact of a six-month product life cycle has been published repeatedly. And of course it is intentional, and it has nothing at all to do with technical advances in electronics. It has everything to do with profit. We all know this, it is not some deep hidden secret.

The auto companies do lament that cars are expected to have a longer product life cycle, although tthe "monkeys" columns do tend to say perhaps they have obtained the method. I recently disposed of my 1985 Dodge van because of a string of electrical failures, some of which were due to rust in modules.

The screens will fail, probably the backlight will go, and the replacement will not be available, or it will cost several hundred dollars for the replacement, and only the dealer will be allowed to install it for several hundred dollars more.

The problemas I see it is not that "we" demand all of these dumb features, but that the marketing people make certain that cars are only offered with those features. After all, selling a $25 piece of hardware for $650 is a way to make a profit, it is a rational busniss plan, I suppose.

But don't worry, folks. The next recession and depression will have cars returned to the bare basics, if you can afford one. Just wait another 2 or 3 ytears.

This is an absurd statement. The USB port started in 1995, it has already lasted more than 15 years and shows no sign of dying off soon. Twisted pair ethernet was around in the mid 80's and is still the predominant networking technology at most every office today. WiFi and SD cards have been around since the late 90's and have also only grown in popularity. I could go on all day with electronic standards that are at or near the 15 year mark that are still going strong. It is usually only the early standards in a given area that die off quickly as they are often there only until the cost of the better standard reaches the point that it becomes THE standard.

it is because electronics technology DOES change so fast is why I proposed a standard data bus such as USB. As electronics standards go, it's the most ubiquitous and longest-lived for consumer electronics. By bringing it into cars, we can replace failed devices or upgrade them to ones with newer features at a much lower cost.

I also wanted to highlight that, upgrade and evolution aspects aside, electronics do NOT last as long as mechanical devices. They're not end-user-maintainable the way a car (mostly) is.

A catastrophic engine failure can be repaired, at worst, by replacing the engine by the end-user. The end-user cannot replace the battery on an Apple product!

Very good point. My newest car is a 1998 Toyota with 160K miles on it. Still runs great. Other than the usual wear on tires, brakes, etc., I've only had one ignition coil fail. I'll probably try to get 300K miles out of it and will likely keep it until it is over 20 years old.

Will USB 2.0 still be here in 20 years? Will much of any of the technology of today be here in 20 years? Or even 10 years?

I think it is laughable that a certain auto manufacturer is pushing advertisements of gadgets in their newest cars so hard, which might not even interface with anything in 5 years. The young lady in the commercial might need to use another device in a few years to find her shoe stores when her car no longer works with the new data and communication protocols of that year. If this advertising is realy effective, I would find it a sad commentary on today's consumer.

I have always had the belief that the more unnecessary gadgets you add to the basic automobile, the more opportunities you have for failures. Time has proven this therory right. When I option up a new car I am very selective on what I check off on the option list. I buy only what I feel would serve me well and avoid paying for gadgets I don't really need whenever possible. Touch Screens of any kind are simply a failure waiting to happen. My $89,00 stand alone GPS is the only touch screen device I own.

Industrial workplaces are governed by OSHA rules, but this isn’t to say that rules are always followed. While injuries happen on production floors for a variety of reasons, of the top 10 OSHA rules that are most often ignored in industrial settings, two directly involve machine design: lockout/tagout procedures (LO/TO) and machine guarding.

Load dump occurs when a discharged battery is disconnected while the alternator is generating current and other loads remain on the alternator circuit. If left alone, the electrical spikes and transients will be transmitted along the power line, leading to malfunctions in individual electronics/sensors or permanent damage to the vehicle’s electronic system. Bottom line: An uncontrolled load dump threatens the overall safety and reliability of the vehicle.

While many larger companies are still reluctant to rely on wireless networks to transmit important information in industrial settings, there is an increasing acceptance rate of the newer, more robust wireless options that are now available.

To those who have not stepped into additive manufacturing, get involved as soon as possible. This is for the benefit of your company. When the new innovations come out, you want to be ready to take advantage of them immediately, and that takes knowledge.

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